


Something Good

by Idle wild (NienteZero)



Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Episode Tag, Gen, discussion of illness, episode tag: s01e04, tw: cancer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-28
Updated: 2014-12-28
Packaged: 2018-03-03 22:35:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2890478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NienteZero/pseuds/Idle%20wild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cassandra and Eve talk about what the team means to Cassandra.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Good

It wasn't that the birthday party wasn't nice. But Eve was feeling a bit thin and worn around the edges from her emergency goodwill spreading duties. The librarians in training were still bonding. Strategically. it was smart to keep some emotional distance from them. The mezzanine lent itself to this. Eve was aware that all of the team had taken advantage of it at one time or another: taking the time to breathe and watch the others, or to find the privacy for certain side conversations. There was something magical about the library, or perhaps about the people called to it. Eve had rarely seen a team form such close unit cohesion so quickly. Certainly not among her NATO teams. The Librarians might have different backgrounds from each other but they seemed to connect on a fundamental level.

Eve watched Cassandra break away from Ezekiel and Jenkins, who were engaged in an animated if not entirely friendly discussion. Jake was playing with the globe, examining it as if his grasp of engineering could unlock its secrets. Cassandra made her way up to the mezzanine.

"It feels good, doesn't it?" she said.

"What feels good?" Eve asked, though she had a feeling she knew where this conversation was going.

"This, all this," Cassandra said, "Being a part of something bigger, having people you can count on, something to believe in."

"That's why I joined the military. I had plenty of people I could count on," Eve said dryly. She leaned over the balcony, avoiding looking at Cassandra. She'd already had some version of this conversation with Nick, and didn't need Cassandra's boundless eagerness on top of that.

"That's great," Cassandra said. Her voice sounded tight. "But I never had this, so I think it's just, it's just good."

Eve turned to Cassandra. 

"I'm sorry. That was selfish to make it about me," she said. "It's just been a long, strange day. Santa is real, and he sure knows how to press my buttons."

Cassandra giggled. "Santa is real," she said, "And we got our wishes, and not one of you made fun of me for wishing that."

"Your parents-" Eve said cautiously.

"My parents just wanted the best for me," Cassandra said. "But it's hard, you know, being a smart kid. Other kids don't like it much when you prove that neither Santa, the Easter Bunny, nor the Tooth Fairy exist."

Eve winced.

"Not a popular move?" she asked.

"No," Cassandra said, "I thought it would be better once I was in college with the other smart kids, but you know, I got sick, and things didn't work out how I planned. It definitely wasn't my parents' dream for me to be a hospital janitor, and even though there are lots of smart kids interning, I'm not part of their world."

Eve considered, "You didn't get to know the medical students?"

"You saw what it was like," Cassandra said, "They'd listen to what I had to say if it was between that and a malpractice suit. Oh, sure, some of them would act like we were friends when it was time to write a paper, or if they couldn't make a diagnosis they'd be pals with the 'crazy janitor' then."

Her voice had a wry, bitter quality to it, and she had the pinched look around her eyes that came when she talked about her cancer. Eve wasn't generally given to comforting touches, but it was Christmas and Cassandra was her team member, and team members looked out for each other. She reached out awkwardly, resting her hand on Cassandra's shoulder.

Cassandra glanced at the hand on her shoulder and her face softened.

"I thought that they were my friends," she said, "but I couldn't help overhear, they'd laugh about the idiot savant who mopped up the pee between giving them test answers. And they acted like I was contagious. I thought medical students would know better. I thought they'd understand that there may be a heritable component in my tumor, possibly abnormalities in chromosome 7p, 10q, and 9p, and there are also known environmental factors, depending on the dose exposure to radiation in treatment of other childhood cancers, damaged DNA in the irradiated cells, and besides which the annual rate of brain tumors in people over twenty in the US is nine in one hundred thousand, although that varies and Maine and Idaho are worse,"

Eve was not prepared for the stream of information. She'd seen Jake help Cassandra to refocus, but he seemed to have a special kind of patience that she wasn't good at.

"Cassandra," she said, somewhere between snapping a command and aiming for soothing, "you were telling me about the medical students."

"I thought they were smart enough to be my friends, but they were as superstitious as anyone else. Maybe more. It's just bad luck, dumb bad luck, random chance. When I was going through diagnosis, I knew the odds against me having cancer. It's there in the numbers. Nine in one hundred thousand isn't one in a million, but it's definitely not one in ten either, so I thought, not me, I can't be one of those people. Because it's just not fair. But there it is, numerically speaking someone has to be one of those nine. And," 

She shrugged, her mouth twisting up into something that looked more like a grief still raw than an acceptance of what she spoke of as plain mathematical fact. Eve patted her shoulder, feeling helpless to offer real comfort. 

"And those students think they're interning at the hospital because they did everything right, worked hard, were the smartest, the best. It must just terrify them to see someone smart like me who did everything right, but when I think too hard my senses get cross-wired and I'm in a purple world smelling flapjacks. Just because of random chance, a random universe."

Her voice took on a low, angry intensity that Eve had only heard from her a few times before.

"They must be terrified by my bad luck, terrified that it could happen to them. But _I'm the one with cancer._ "

Eve nodded, "It sounds like they're too immature to know how to handle what happened to you."

"Exactly," Cassandra said, smiling a watery smile. "But Jake and Ezekiel and you and Jenkins, you don't treat me like you might catch something from me. Flynn saw me for what I am, and you all don't treat me badly even after I made a huge mistake. You treat me like a real person, not a prodigy, or a tragedy, or a freak."

Eve tightened her grip on Cassandra's shoulder. "You're none of those things. You're a member of this team. Jake and Ezekiel might not act like this is a big deal to them, but I don't think they've had anything like this before either - people around who are smart enough to get them, who aren't asking them to be something they're not."

The moment was interrupted as the globe sailed past Eve's head, landing behind her with a crash.

"Sorry, sorry," Jake said as he ran up the stairs toward them, "Anyway, there's still cake and punch, no call to be hidin' out up here."

As he herded them back down to the party, Eve smiled to herself. This group might not have clear lines of command, but it was definitely the most interesting team she'd ever been a part of.


End file.
